Archive for August, 2005

August 31, 2005

Directnic.com is an ICANN accredited domain registrar based in downtown New Orleans. Through hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, they have continued to be operational and have continued to nameserve hundreds of thousands of domains, thanks to the miracles of gasoline generators, human ingenuity and the effective provisions of gasoline supplies.

Even more amazing is that they are blogging about it live and supplying a live video feed, which they move around as action warrants. The blog tells tales of survival, provisioning, former special forces training kicking in, cops looting, thugs shooting and even some shots of the blog writer’s model fiancee.

Right now we’re trying to show you all the looting. Guys pushing shopping carts with 40 Nike boxes in them. People breaking into cars. Assaulting ATM machines. It’s hard just to sit by and do nothing. That’s property that belongs to other people and these animals are just taking it.

You know, this crisis is going to end. One day it is going to be over, and people are going to have to live with themselves and the knowledge of how they behaved. The cowards, the thieves, the murderers. We’re getting a guy on cam right now stealing tires from one car and putting them in his car. What a bunch of monkeys. No respect at all for their fellow man. Like I said, one day this is going to be over, and I hope the shame overwhelms these bastards.

August 30, 2005

The diamond industry has tailored over 70 years of marketing around the idea that a marriage is NOT a marriage without the BLING. Their recent campaign underscores their updated message in a world where the role and composition of marriage is changing.

This anniversary, show her your love is everlasting by saying “I Forever Do.”

Say “I Forever Do” as opposed to the first time you made that promise….but didn’t really mean it. Well now you mean it forever, you do.

Another gem:

Only the gift of a diamond, as timeless and unique as your love, shows her you would marry her all over again.

In the past, many men have tried to show their devotion by treating their wives with respect, providing for them, and accompanying them to watch romantic comedies involving a woman and her bookstore (or a woman, her dog and a bookstore. Or a woman, her dog, and her 3 best friends, one of whom owns a bookstore and meets guys on IM). And they were all wrong. Thanks to the diamond industry and their products backed with extensive empirical romantical experimentation, we now know that only the gift of a diamond will suffice to show your wife that you will love her for foreverido.

August 29, 2005

In May on their 1st quarter conference call, auto retail chain CSK Auto announced that they would be launching a secondary store initiative called Pay’N’Save. In the words of CEO Maynard Jenkins (via Streetevents):

Second, the Company has recently launched a new retail concept store named Pay N Save. Pay N Save, which targets a broader demographic than our CSK stores, represents one potential component of an important long-term growth strategy for CSK and is allowing us to develop new sourcing, particularly import sourcing for our merchandise.

Well, Maynard, that doesn’t sound so bad. What kind of goods will you sell at these Pay N Save stores?

Pay N Save stores plan to offer a consistent core of value merchandise, and I want to stress value, consisting primarily of tools, hardware, housewares and other household goods, seasonal goods such as tents, outdoor furniture, water toys, and a constantly changing array of unusual merchandise, such as industrial popcorn machines, garden windmills, full-size leather barber chairs, all at incredibly low prices.

Ahh the “Selling-Shit-from-China” business model. But, lest investors be concerned:

I want to assure everyone we understand what our main focus is and [we]will remain [focused on] automotive parts at CSK.

Because for an auto-retailer, nothing says focus like starting a whole new concept store to sell “an eclectic mix of items such as windmills, fishing gear, water fountains and bar stools.” CSK Auto, you win the Patrick Byrne Award for Operational Focus and Excellence. Congratulations, young padowan.

August 25, 2005

Last week I attended two concerts at Madison Square Garden: Eminem/50 Cent and Neil Diamond. Both were great shows and I fit in well at both in my pin-stripe suit and Hermes tie (my Hermes tie is sweet, seriously).

After attending these shows I’ve decided something important about the difference between Caucasians and African-Americans: White people have respect but no soul. Black people have soul but no respect.

Neil Diamond is a great person and his songs show respect for love (“September Morn”), his country (“We’re coming to America”), and blue jeans (“Forever in Blue Jeans”); but sadly Neil Diamond does not have a soul – and it’s pretty obvious to anyone who was at that show.

Mr. 50 cent, on the other hand, now his singing and dancing are filled with soul but his song titles show pretty obvious disrespect for young ladies (“Surrounded by Hoes”), drug addicts (“High all da time”), and gangsters (“You ain’t no gangsta”).

If anyone has any ideas on how to combine the respectful attitude of Neil Diamond with the rhyming soul of 50 cent please email me at kaiseredamame@gmail.com.

August 17, 2005

Our position on outsourcing is still in the process of being formulated (I have, in a collaboration with Dr Deep Gupta, in fact, outsourced our position on outsourcing, more to follow on that later). But from our surface analysis of outsourcing, there are clear and undeniable positives.

There are almost no negatives to outsourcing, unless you consider alleged “abusive child labor to pad the pockets of the American affluent” a negative. To go against the curremt, I actually see this as one of the sweetest fruits of the globalization tree. Tiny little hands sewing my multinational quilt of opulence.

Which brings you to today’s post. Just now, the sweetest fruit of globalization has announced its intention to enter the market. From Blog Oriented (via MR.com):

We also have one phase of our design that we have not yet mentioned. A few of our investors think that it will be our biggest hit traffic-wise. I will go into it more in later posts but in brief it can be summed up as, “Sexy Chinese female bloggers.”

If we had one investment to make, one position to take, it would be to go long “Sexy Chinese Female Bloggers.” Get in on the IPO. Do whatever it takes. The greatest outsourcing investment opportunity of our lifetimes. Price Target $Perftyperftyeleven.

August 14, 2005

My knowledge of Islamic doctrine is admittedly limited — I’m the same guy who thought that “Mecca” was a low-carb energy drink until early last week. Apparently, the Koran prohibits the paying or receiving of interest. It’s high time for Muslim leaders to update that belief because they’re missing out on the American dream and the greatest invention of the modern age: sophisticated financial products. Why should I be able to own 6 condos in Miami (and a duplex in the Valley) while Muslims everywhere are forced to barter for housing?

It just seems like the type of situation where Muslim leaders should get together and say “Ok, from now on, this rule only applies to excessive interest. No loan sharking but that mortgage from Countrywide is A-OK.”

I bet Mohammed would have been all about 4.4% fixed rate mortgages. He was only pissed because he had bad credit and the best he could do at the local medieval mortgage broker was a 7.8% 5/1 ARM. No way you want to put that kind of financing on a herd of mangy goats; you can’t get gap insurance on them! I’d be pissed too.

August 13, 2005

JD here and my brain has been blown by the guys at MR. TC and AT usually hit me up with some mind bending econ, but this is something that has broken my cognitive visual powers to the nth degree. In this image square A and square B are the same shade of gray.

No, I didn’t believe it either. I looked it from every angle, I used every visual queue and I even tried some 3D glasses. Then KM hit me with this proof. Thanks KM, my brain is feeling less vulnerable now. My intuition will bounce back though, so be ready to jump on it long in the near future. Big time. JD out.

August 11, 2005

Yes yes, this whole $1bn Yahoo-Alibabastakeaquisition deal is big news to some people and I’m sure it will have some sort of really important impact on China, Indochine, Siam and all those places.

But all these stock-crazed investors are missing the glorious naming opportunities as the two funniest corporate names come together as one. When they inevitably decide to create new names and rebrand all their products, a total no-brainer in this analyst’s opinion, the possibilities will be endless.

Yahooba has already been penned, but let’s delve into my grab bag of branding brilliance:

Aliboohoo. It calls attention to the emptiness of life and the pathos associated with a capitalistic bourgeois existence.

Yalibaboo!. Alludes to a distant time, the golden age of our Half-Human Half-Dinosaur ancestors, who founded civilization 33,000 years ago and created badmitton (still played to this day, the oldest sport in continuous existence).

Baba ali,ya? Hoo!. Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of life? Hoo!

Aliyahooblies. It booms out at you, making its presence felt from the very bosom of inspiration.

American China Auction and Search Corp. Provocative. Basic. Dynamic.

Hot-Hand in the Mahjong Game Inc

It pained my heart to learn that Who’s Your Daddy is already taken by a licensing company; but ?????? is still available.

It’s obvious to you that these names are positioned for explosive growth because, well, we said so, and that’s all the analysis you need. Strong Buy with a current price target of !.

August 10, 2005

Check out this slide I found in a recent Visteon investor presentation:

That’s right, believe it or not the hard working employees at Visteon have had 100% year-over-year growth in “ideas”. Now that is something. You might ask, well just how many ideas did they have? And that’s impossible to answer, because there is no scale whatsoever on the graph. For all we know 2003 could have been an extremely easy comp for ideas: Visteon employees could’ve sat around all year long reading books they had already read and, as a result, had almost no new ideas in 2003.

What I’d like to know is who had the idea to make and show this slide? And perhaps more importantly, was the idea for this slide included in the ‘new ideas’ calculation? If not, it’s possible that this slide is actually understating the true new idea growth.

So I just told my 15-year-old brother about this, he said that he thinks for every new idea he has today, he’s likely to have 2 new ideas tomorrow. That’s 100% growth in new ideas PER DAY. Impressive.

So conclusion is Long: My Little Brother, Short: Visteon. The thesis is that my Little Brother’s new idea growth will outpace Visteon’s by roughly 1x(10^109)% per year, roughly.

August 9, 2005

Hello. I’m a new poster, my name is Johnny Debacle. JD for short. My MO is abbreviations. Because nothing beats a good abbrev. Well, nothing other than a cooler, better abbrev. The only abbrevs that I can’t stand are overused, hackneyed abbrevs (e.g. LOL et al). But really, comparing abbrevs? Come on, find a better use of time.

I’ve noticed some of the other longorshort bloggers using really big words so I thought I’d kick it off by helping the readers who don’t understand them.

iconoclast – this refers to a person who grabs on to icons, usually the ones on his desktop, and then drags them all over the place with no regard for human life. I know, random word huh?

esoteric – this word is only understood by a small group of people, I couldn’t get a hold of them to get a definition.

Finally I’d like to say that I am the man. I was watching Miss Teen USA last night, and turned to my buddy right when Miss Teen Ohio walked out and I said: “she’s the best, she’s got the goods”. Two thrilling hours later, she was crowned.

August 5, 2005

I’m an iconoclast, but a pie-analyst by training. We think the entire financial pie baking industry is inherently cyclical and is positioned to rebound in a big way after a couple of Sarbanes-Oxley induced down years. Mudpies are a strong buy per our recommendation, as we expect them to come back into fashion on a pro-forma basis. Pumpkin pie looks attractive at current prices too.

A larger theme in the “Long or Short” newsblogletter is that in any mania, look to the enablers, the proverbial “companies providing the shovels to the gold miners” rather than the “gold miners” themselves. Extending this framework to the frenzied pie market, we are currently recommending a long position in women, bred for their skills in baking. Target price $Unicorn.

August 4, 2005

We are initiating coverage on the Little People sector with the following ratings.Gnomes – UNDERWEIGHTSky Gnomes – OVERWEIGHTDwarves – OVERWEIGHTElves – EQUALWEIGHT

GnomesGnomes have been fading after a strong 2 year run fueled by gnome icon Giles Standish’s turn as the Travelocity spokesman. Giles took gnomes to previously unattained levels and improved the group’s overall reputation. Unfortunately, all good things must end and Travelocity recently announced a revamped marketing plan that included an early retirement for Giles. We wish him the best but downgrade the group as it appears unlikely that gnomes as a whole will be able to comp against the Giles loss, at least for the next year. Sell.

Sky GnomesWe must confess that prior to today, we were completely unaware of sky gnomes. Luckily, we listened to the BSkyB (BSY) quarterly conference call this morning before publishing this initiation and learned of their incredible discovery of sky gnomes. Consider that 1) SkyTV plans to market these sky gnomes to their entire SkyTV subscriber base, 2) sky gnomes did not exist before today, and 3) we are talking about gnomes in the sky here — they are traditionally highly earth-bound creatures. Buy and hold.

DwarvesThe increased interest in dwarves has been well documented but they have further to go. As the Wall Street Journal noted, “some people are just into lavish dwarf entertainment.” Indeed. Increased desire for lavish dwarf entertainment is a long-term secular trend that we see continuing for the forseeable future. In fact, dwarf-related leisure options have heretofore been available only to the uber-wealthy including former Tyco (TYC) CEO L. Dennis Kozlowski and star Fidelity traders. However, we fully expect that time-shares and other financing options will make delightful dwarf diversions increasingly affordable to the middle class. Buy and hold.

ElvesElves pose an interesting conundrum for any fundamentals-oriented investor. Clearly the group has benefited from Lord of the Rings exposure over the past three years. Now, with Peter Jackson’s masterpiece in the rearview mirror, elf investors are left with the historical (and unfair, we believe) association with fairies. Hold.Compare and decide:

August 3, 2005

Mexican sauces are a really “hot” segment. Money inflows to new emerging sauce ETF’s have been a beacon announcing the market’s interest. But before you gobble up one of these funds, you need to consider what you are sticking your hard earned dollars into.

Mexican Mole Sauce is a storied chile sauce, flavored with cinnamon, and a bevy of exotic spices. Sell-side analysts adore Mexican mole sauce, using their feather pens to scribe about its “dynamic culinary miscegenation opportunities” and its recent “binomial marketing initiative.” But fundamentally, Mole Sauce looks like dirt and it TASTES like dirt. It takes a lot of tequila and a lot of Mexicans to produce. Altogether it is a costly and lengthy process.

Management has not addressed the risks of competitive sauces sourcing Mexicans from China. In fact, Mexican Mole Sauce has no China strategy whatsoever. And a footnote in the K reveals an even deeper problem. Listed in the ingredient section: “one teaspoon anise seed.” We recommend shorting Mexican Mole Sauce and shorting anise seed as well. Target price 7 pesos.

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